


All Your Promises

by TheVoiceofWrath (meet_your_fate)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon compliant through Season 2, First Time, Happy Ending, High School, M/M, POV Peter Hale, Petopher Secret Santa 2014, Underage Sex, also NOT underage sex, major time skip, teenage heartbreak
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 05:07:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2800646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meet_your_fate/pseuds/TheVoiceofWrath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He's fifteen when he first lays eyes on Chris Argent.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tenshi6](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tenshi6/gifts).



> I've played fast and loose with some timelines here. I considered having Chris pretending to be a high school student, but then I figured it was probably underage enough without adding like a real age gap. But I didn't say otherwise so, hey, if that's you thing? You go right ahead and read it that way. Peter is 16 before anything sexual happens. And wow, is it ever difficult writing a high school era fic taking place in like the early 90's. I had to keep myself from adding in so many modern day anachronisms. I probably missed some. My bad! The second chapter takes place sometime after Season 2 of the show.
> 
> And I'm so sorry, [rainbowspirk](http://rainbowspirk.tumblr.com/). I know you asked for a High School AU, but this is what came out. It's not really AU at all. At least I managed to make Peter the weird new kid who loves sci-fi and cinnamon. I tried to include elements from the other prompts you gave, too. Maybe that's how this ended up not AU... But hopefully you like it okay! Happy holidays, darling ♥
> 
> A quick note about the Peter in this fic: he is not the Peter from Visionary and beyond. He's the Peter from S1 and S2. Maybe you don't really differentiate between Peters, but I do, so I thought I'd clarify just in case.

He's fifteen when he first lays eyes on Chris Argent. Oh, he knows the Argent name. Of course he does. Every good little lycanthrope knows who the Argent family is. But that doesn't keep him from being a little curious about Chris. Why would the Argents even come Beacon Hills when they _have_ to know this is Hale territory?

Chris is a senior and new to the school, too, but he's instantly popular in a way that Peter isn't. Peter blames it on the homeschooling. All young wolves are homeschooled until they have a reasonable amount of control over themselves. Being made to wait until sophomore year—by his dear sister slash Alpha, of course—instead of joining the herd of students at the beginning of freshman year has put Peter at a social disadvantage. Talia insists that it was for his own good, that he didn't have a good enough grip on his anger last year. Peter very much disagrees. He thinks she just wanted him to be wrong-footed, to have to work harder to make friends.

Interesting, handsome seniors don't have that problem. Peter hasn’t made a single friend by the time he heads for lunch. He hasn’t even made an acquaintance, really, even though they had to do a horrible introduction game in his English class where they were made to stand up and say their names and a food they like that begins with the same letter. It was torture. He still feels ashamed for having to say he likes potatoes in front of a whole classroom. One would think that kind of mortification is the thing friendships are built on, but nope. No one seems to have cared one bit that his name is Peter and he likes potatoes.

At least he wasn’t like Cathy, who chose celery as her food instead of candy. What a wasted opportunity. So, really, it could be worse. But he gets to the cafeteria and finds that Chris Argent is already sitting at what must be the ‘cool kid’ table with the in crowd gathered around him like moths to a flame. It’s really irksome. Not that Peter is jealous or anything like that. No, he just thought he’d excel a little more quickly at this social hierarchy business. It’s going to be a little harder work than he’d planned on, is all. It’s fine.

So he sits at one of the tables on the outskirts of the cafeteria and reads while he eats his lunch. He made the cinnamon streusel muffins himself and happily packed two of them in his lunch bag. And his book, a Philip K. Dick novel, is probably infinitely better company than can be found amongst the other unpopular kids.

If his enhanced hearing picks up some people talking about him and how ‘weird’ he apparently is for reading and wearing a Star Wars shirt and eating food from home instead of buying hot lunch, well. He’ll remember who said what and make them pay for it some other time. He can wait years for revenge if he has to. He’s not _weird_ …

After lunch, Peter walks into his Algebra II class and immediately finds a seat towards the back. He can already see this class will have a lot of upperclassmen in it, the ones who are desperate for math credits to graduate, and he doesn’t want them to see him sitting up at the front like some kind of teacher’s pet. He’s already starting at a popularity deficit here—he’s not going to take any more chances.

But somehow Chris Argent comes through the door, too. Peter wouldn’t have thought an Argent would be worried about math credits. It’s always possible that this particular one isn’t terribly intelligent, of course. What’s more of a surprise is that Chris Argent comes and sits beside Peter instead of the other upperclassmen. Could it be that Chris Argent genuinely has no idea who or what Peter is? That he wasn’t forewarned about who the werewolves on campus are? Well, that just seems sloppy.

“You must have pretty good eyesight, sitting all the way back here,” Chris says, smiling in an picturesque and mildly insipid sort of way. Peter is absolutely not charmed, not at _all_. No, now he’s _certain_ that Chris is just messing with him. Hunters toying with wolves. Hunters are apparently not very clever, along with being sloppy.

“Something like that,” Peter says. Then class starts and Peter certainly doesn’t keep glancing over at Chris’s fetching profile.

♦

Peter stops wearing his nerdy shirts. He still wears them at home, but apparently being a ‘dweeb’ is affecting his social status at school. It doesn’t seem to help much over the next few weeks, though, and the only people who pay attention to him are a group of kids even less popular than he is. The only exception is Chris who, despite being one of the cool kids, somehow gets it in his head to come bother Peter at his locker at least once a day and pester him about whatever book he’s reading or strike up random conversations like he actually cares about Peter’s opinion.

He honestly doesn’t think Chris is aware that Peter can hear the other popular students talking, can hear them wondering why Chris is spending time with that ‘loser’. It’s absolutely infuriating to be called a loser, even to his back. Maybe _especially_ to his back. But worse yet is Chris answering their questions with shrugs and ‘I don’t know’s. Would it hurt him to maybe talk Peter up a bit to the popular kids? It makes him feel like some kind of secret project of Chris’s, makes him wonder if Chris’s interest in him is the beginnings of some sort of prank.

So Peter tries to avoid Chris sometimes. Chris is irritatingly good at tracking him down, but he seems to stay away when Peter is surrounded by his less than popular classmates. This is how Peter accidentally becomes king of the losers. He’ll work with it, though. Better king of the losers than nothing at all, right? So he eats lunch with Rebecca, the girl who likes horses to an unusual degree, and Joey, who reeks like pot all the time, and Lindsey, who is very, very serious about color guard. More outcasts come occasionally until their lunch table is full.

It’s not the cool table like Peter wanted, but it’ll do for now. Everyone has to start somewhere, right? And it’s better than eating alone.

But, one day, Chris comes over to his lunch table. This breaks Chris’s pattern of behavior and Peter is thrown by it for a moment. That’s probably why he doesn’t really have a response at first when Chris says, “Hey, Pete. You should come to my cross country meet on Saturday.”

It takes Rebecca elbowing him in the ribs to make him clear his throat and answer. “Saturday, you said? I may have other plans. We’ll see.”

Chris smiles that smile of his again, the one that absolutely _isn’t_ charming, and nods. “Okay. I’ll see you there maybe.”

Then he leaves and Lindsey sighs dreamily. “Getting asked out by Chris Argent. I’m so jealous.”

“He didn’t ‘ask me out’,” Peter insists. He may or may not be blushing a little bit, but he’ll deny it ‘til the day he dies. “And, honestly, _his_ cross country meet? Like he owns it or something? The nerve…”

♦

He ends up going. He shouldn’t, he knows that, but he goes. For some reason. He blames the full moon, which is tomorrow. He doesn’t exactly make the most rational decisions so near the full moon. He gets his older brother to drive him so that he can avoid having to deal with Talia and promises he’ll find his own way home.

It turns out that cross country is only exciting for the actual runners. He just sits around, bored and waiting. Clearly, Chris asked him to attend the cross country meet as a form of torture. But it’s worth it when Chris’s particular race is finishing and Peter can pick out Chris heartbeat coming around the corner first, steady and strong and even. Cleary that hunter training is paying off.

After, Chris drinks a lot of water and then comes up to Peter. He stinks of sweat, not that Peter really minds. He smiles again and says, “Thanks for coming.”

Peter shrugs. _Aloof_ is what he’s going for and he really hopes it’s working. He wouldn’t want Chris to think he has some kind of effect on Peter. “It turns out I didn’t have anything better to do after all.”

“Uh huh. What’d you think of the race?” Chris asks.

“I think that you shouldn’t be racing against normal high school students. It doesn’t really seem fair,” Peter says. That’s the reason Peter got from Talia, shaming him from going out for sports. That it wouldn’t be _fair_ to the other kids. He’s thinking more and more lately that he doesn’t really give a crap if it’s fair, though.

Chris laughs and nods a little, not even going to bother denying it that he’s a little more seasoned than the average teenager.

“Where’s your family?” Peter asks. “Shouldn’t they have come to see you run?”

“They’re busy getting ready for some stuff tomorrow.”

The full moon, no doubt. Peter wonders if there are Omegas outside the Hale territory that the Argents have their eye on. It’s a chilly reminder that Chris isn’t just in good shape; he and his family are trained killers, trained to kill Peter and his kind. Suddenly he’s not enjoying himself even a little bit. “I should get going…”

“I could give you a ride home,” Chris offers.

Peter says no, that he can manage it on his own. By the time he gets home, Talia is waiting for him. She interrogates him about where he’s been. He doesn’t lie—there’s nothing wrong about going to a school sporting event—but they end up fighting anyway. They get into some ugly yelling matches because Talia might be his Alpha, but she isn’t his _mother_. She’s only happy when he’s doing exactly as she says, though, and it’s more than enough to enrage him. Their relationship is volatile at best and openly hostile at worst.

Somewhere in the yelling, the fact that he was there to see Chris Argent comes out and that only leads to Talia forbidding him from seeing Chris ever again.

It’s an order Peter has absolutely no intention of following. Also, it’s impractical. How is he supposed to keep from seeing someone who goes to school with him?

♦

Peter doesn’t get any cooler in the next few weeks, but he’s thinking about going out for basketball come winter. He doesn’t really care all that much about fairness and it seems like all of the star athletes are popular by default.

Chris still pays an odd amount of attention to Peter, but Peter is beginning to allow himself to enjoy it for some silly reason. He finds himself looking forward to sitting by Chris in math and wondering when Chris will stop at Peter’s locker throughout the day. Not that Peter would admit to enjoying it out loud, of course. He wouldn’t dare.

Chris comes by Peter’s locker one day with a book. “I thought you might like it,” he says. “I found it by accident when I took my little sister shopping.”

Peter instantly thinks it’s some kind of trick. He takes the book and looks at it, smells it subtly. It doesn’t seem to have been poisoned with wolfsbane. And it really does look interesting, some ancient collection of science fiction short stories from the late seventies. So maybe he’s a little shy seeming, a little pink in the face, when he says, “Thanks…”

“No problem,” Chris says with that smile of his before heading to class.

Peter tucks the book into his backpack to read later. He knows that Talia would throw a fit if she found out where it came from and, honestly, that’s half the appeal.

♦

When school lets out on an otherwise totally normal Tuesday, he hears Chris in a heated conversation with someone on the phone kids use to call home sick. The bustling of students heading home for the day makes it impossible for Peter to pick out the other side of the call. Whatever is going on, Chris isn’t happy. Peter is maybe paying a little too much attention because Chris hangs up and turns around, eyes landing right on him.

He feels like he’s been caught red handed. How terribly indiscreet of him. Not that he really did anything _wrong_ , of course, but that doesn’t keep him from startling a bit.

Chris comes over to him with that smile, though this time it maybe seems a little less genuine, and says, “I was wondering if maybe you’d be interested in helping me with math.”

That is not at all what Peter had been expecting. He quirks a curious brow. “I wasn’t aware you were having a problem in math. You seem to do pretty well in class.”

But Chris insists he’s falling behind and could really use the help. He pushes for study sessions and/or tutoring twice a week in the library and Peter finds himself agreeing for some reason.

Mother Moon help him if Talia finds out.

They don’t really get anything done in their first session. Peter keeps trying to get them back on track, but Chris gets distracted and strikes up some totally unrelated conversation. It’s really odd considering Chris is the one who wanted to work on math. But Peter is easily pulled into debates about which Star Trek captain is the best. He didn’t even know Chris liked sci-fi. Maybe it’s far too hopeful or fanciful, but he wonders if Chris has been watching episodes of The Next Generation on VHS in order to talk to Peter about it. That would be kind of sweet, wouldn’t it?

The next session, Chris says he can’t focus in the library and suggests they move to the little café downtown. This is how Peter ends up in Chris’s car. It’s strange, being in a hunter’s car. He half expects to be able to smell wolfsbane in the upholstery or maybe see weapons in the backseat. Thankfully, he doesn’t. That might’ve put a bit of a dampener on their blossoming… friendship? Whatever it is, anyway.

Peter picks out the largest snicker doodle in the case when they reach the café. Chris looks at him curiously and he maybe gets a touch defensive. “I like cinnamon, okay?”

Chris just laughs and insists on paying.

Peter still doesn’t think it’s a date. There was no actual asking out involved.

♦

His birthday comes without much fanfare from the pack. They’re busy, though, with lots of things going on and with little children, too. He’s kind of used to not getting a great deal of attention and he only lets himself be upset about it very occasionally, usually late at night when he can’t sleep. He got a birthday hug this morning from his nephew Derek, though, and it was so sweet and earnest that he thinks this isn’t the worst birthday he’s ever had. Derek will be four this coming Christmas and that means he’ll start to think hugging boys is weird soon. That’ll be a sad day.

There’s an unusual cinnamon-like aroma in the hallway before first period. He doesn’t pay it much mind until he opens his locker to reveal a plate of homemade snickerdoodles.

Chris sidles up next to him. “Happy Birthday, Pete. Sweet sixteen, huh?”

The cookies don’t smell poisoned. Peter can’t even really find it in himself to be angry that Chris somehow got into his locker, let alone called him ‘Pete’ again. He hates ‘Pete’… But he’s being absolutely genuine when he says, “Thanks, Chris.”

“You’re welcome,” Chris says. He clears his throat and glances away for a moment. “So, uh… Homecoming is coming up.”

“Yeah. What about it?” Peter asks.

Chris lets out an amused sort of scoff. “Well, I was kind of hoping you might wanna go with me.”

Immediately, Peter begins to suspect foul play again. Maybe the cookies were a ploy to lure him into a false sense of security. Why would a hunter ask a werewolf to homecoming? Unless Chris is, somehow, being willfully ignorant about what Peter is. It just doesn’t make sense. “You know that’d be social suicide, right? You’re friends would never let you live down being seen with me.”

“They’re not my friends; I don’t care what they think,” Chris insists. “I like spending time with you.”

“This isn’t some kind of prank?” Peter asks, listening for deception. He hasn’t heard any yet… but he has to be sure. If he’s the butt of some hideous joke, he’ll never be able to climb the social ladder. Which is somehow more important than being murdered by a hunter in the middle of a school dance.

Chris shakes his head. “There’s no prank. I made you cookies and I lied about needing help in math to hang out with you. Seriously, Peter. Come to homecoming with me.”

It doesn’t sound like deception—the part about not actually needing a math tutor aside, of course—so Peter says yes. Maybe he’s a fool.

♦

He has to lie about his homecoming plans. Talia would forbid him from going if she knew what was really going on and lying to one’s Alpha is always a complicated process involving half truths and deflection. By the time he’s done, though, Talia thinks he’s just meeting friends, Rebecca and Joey and Lindsey and the rest, to platonically dance together and that he’s planning on catching a ride home with one of them. Peter considers it a job well done. Talia drops him off at the school with a curfew that he doesn’t intend to adhere to. Judging by the look on Talia’s face, she doesn’t really expect it of him anyway. It’s cute that she’s going through the motions anyway.

He heads inside and meets Chris, who’s lounging against the wall attractively in a suit that’s a great deal nicer than most everyone else’s haphazard formalwear. He might’ve known that the Argents are well off, but he hadn’t considered that that would translate into actual tailored suits. Peter had thought he looked pretty good himself when he left home; now he’s feeling somehow underdressed. Is his tie crooked? Is his jacket too loose across the shoulders?

But Chris comes right over to him with that smile Peter is really starting to grow fond of and says, “Hey. You look good. I wish I could’ve picked you up, though, maybe taken you out to dinner. You get all dressed up and you should hit the town at least a _little_ bit.”

Peter would’ve liked that. He would’ve liked that a whole lot. “Well,” he says with his own charming smile. He knows it’s charming because he practices it in the mirror. “Maybe you can take me home after the dance…”

He knows it’s not an even trade with going on something like an actual date, one with an actual meal involved, but he’s maybe implying he’d be open to _things_ if Chris is also interested in those things. The kinds of things that can be done in a parked car somewhere between here and home.

“I’d like that,” Chris says. He leads Peter out onto the gym floor. Boys dancing together isn’t terribly common at these things, Peter doesn’t think anyway as he’s never been to a school dance, but Chris either doesn’t care or thinks he’s popular enough that it doesn’t matter and Peter is along for the ride.

He enjoys it. He thinks Chris does, too, and he lets himself be led during the slow dances without a lot fuss. It isn’t exactly a hardship to have Chris’s arms around him, after all. He likes the way Chris smells up close, likes the way the perspiration from dancing mixes with Chris’s cologne. He can’t help but wonder if Chris was careful not to put too much on for the sake of sensitive werewolf noses.

Chris kisses him out in the middle of the dance floor and he steadfastly refuses to swoon over it. Though it is really nice. It’s a good first kiss…

He asks Chris to get him punch twice and it tickles him to no end that Chris actually goes and gets him some. Peter is practically preening over having a handsome senior apparently at his beck and call. It’s good for his ego, which has suffered greatly during this trial of unpopularity.

When they leave a little before homecoming is due to end and go to Chris’s car, Chris opens the passenger door for him and they both laugh over the absurdity of the gesture, though Chris’s laugh is a little more wry. Like Chris knows he’s being ridiculous, but isn’t letting that stop him. But Peter enjoyed getting Chris to fetch him drinks and so he’s not going to turn down gentlemanly qualities now. He gets in the car and pretends he doesn’t feel nervous as they drive the wrong way to get to Peter’s home. It’s not until they reach the overlook—Beacon Hills’s own make out point or lover’s lane or whatever—that it really sinks in that they’re going _parking_. Peter is a virgin. Not that he cares about the social construct of virginity in general, but this is still his first time. He’s a little nervous, though he refuses to let on, and maybe his face is a little flushed from those nerves as well as a little shyness and self consciousness.

But he’s not afraid. He thinks he can probably trust Chris with this, since Chris could’ve killed him a hundred times by now and hasn’t. And Chris smells very good. Very, very good. So Peter unbuckles his seatbelt and shifts around to face Chris better. “Well?”

Chris seems a little hesitant. His hands are still on the steering wheel even, clutching at it aimlessly. “We don’t have to,” he says.

“Do you not want to?” Peter asks, frowning a little bit. He’s not going to _push_. He just thought that Chris would want to and he wants to himself. But, if it turns out that Chris _doesn’t_ , well. Peter will only feel a little foolish for a few days. It wouldn’t be the end of the world.

“No, I do. I do want to,” Chris insists. He’s looking pensively out at the town. It really is kind of a nice view at night with all the lights, only Peter had hoped Chris would be looking at _him_ instead of the crummy town. “I just want you to know that we don’t _have_ to. It’s okay if we don’t.”

Peter huffs. “You’re sending some weird signals, Christopher.”

“Sorry,” Chris says with a sheepish little smile.

“No, it’s okay,” Peter chuckles. “I’d rather we have this all straightened out before proceeding. I want to. And you want to, too, right?”

Chris nods. “Right.”

“Good. So, we’re clear about that. Can we get into the backseat now?” Peter asks.

Chris hesitates for some reason, maybe still not quite certain or maybe feeling bad for taking advantage of someone two years younger than him—which is absolute nonsense that Peter would argue with if Chris said it out loud. But then Chris opens his door and Peter does, too. They get settled in the backseat and just _kiss_ for a while, until Peter’s mouth is tingling and swollen from it.

He tries not to bite too much, not to nip at Chris’s lips, because he thinks that might be more of a werewolf thing in general and maybe Chris won’t like it. But then it’s hard to think at all because Chris is kissing—and _biting_ , these wonderful, sharp little nips—his way down Peter’s neck. He loses track of where his jacket and tie have gone. But at least Chris can’t mind terribly much that he’s doing this with a werewolf, with the way he keeps sucking a mark over Peter’s jugular and pulling back just enough to watch it fade away in the dim light. At least now he knows for sure that Chris is aware of Peter’s species and not somehow completely oblivious to it.

Maybe he should care that Chris might have some kind of a fetish. But it’s working in his favor right now, so whatever. He should also probably mind the way he’s baring his neck so easily, so completely, to Chris. He chooses not to care about that, either.

He starts shoving Chris’s clothes off, too, and then he gets _his_ turn at Chris’s neck. It’s hard to keep from dropping his fangs and leaving a mark that will _stay_ on Chris’s skin. Control is something he works hard for, though, and he’s not going to lose it right now. Instead, he just kisses and tries to make his noises more like groans and less like growls.

Ending up in Chris’s lap isn’t exactly what he had in mind. Though straddling Chris’s thighs is lovely, he’s pretty sure he was supposed to end up on his back. He must look kind of confused because Chris says, “Like this. We can get to the rest of it some other time, okay?”

Peter would argue, but then Chris is pulling his hips down and rocking up against him and the sound he makes is really a _yowl_ more than anything else. So he ends up grinding against Chris shamelessly until Chris unzips their collective dress pants and works around their underwear to get both of their dicks in his hand. His hand is rougher than Peter’s, who doesn’t build up calluses by nature of having been born a werewolf. Especially not the way a hunter who trains with weapons does. Peter has to squeeze his eyes shut to keep Chris from seeing their shining gold, from seeing him losing his control a little bit.

When he comes, it’s with his nose buried against the juncture of Chris’s neck and jaw and his hand perhaps gouging some claw marks into the seat. It’s _good_ and Chris follows a few moments after, his groan a delicious, broken thing that Peter will remember for the rest of his life.

He’s already looking forward to that next time Chris promised.

After a bit of a cleanup with tissues from Chris’s glove compartment, and after making themselves presentable or at least not too terribly disheveled, Chris drives him home. Peter has Chris stop at the end of the long driveway and looks over at him kind of bashfully. “You could come in maybe. If you wanted to. There are secret tunnels…”

It could be Peter’s imagination. He isn’t sure. But he thinks that Chris looks a little pained over his offer for some reason. “Not this time. Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Peter says, not wanting Chris to feel bad over it or whatever. He leans over to kiss Chris one more time. If Chris is a little intense about it, well. Peter’s not going to complain. He likes the way it feels—like Chris is dying for just a little more of him. He pulls back and smiles at Chris, a genuine and tender sort of thing. He had a really nice time tonight. “I’ll see you Monday…”

“Goodnight, Peter,” Chris says.

♦

Peter doesn’t see Chris at school on Monday. He’d been expecting Chris to come up to him at his locker first thing, to kiss him and maybe try to hold his hand, but that doesn’t happen. He doesn’t see Chris in the cafeteria or in Algebra or at the library after school.

He somehow holds out hope until Wednesday that maybe Chris is sick or something, but then he hears some students talking about how Chris Argent up and moved, about how weird and sudden it was. But it’s not until he goes to the house the Argent family had been staying in and finds it empty that it actually sinks in.

Chris is gone and he’s never coming back. He _left_. He left _Peter_.

He lets himself be sad and angry for a few hours. Talia even elects not to ask questions when he comes home reeking of teenage heartbreak, just holds him and pets at his hair and tells him she’s sorry he’s hurting. He knows he’s in bad shape when Talia is gentle with him. She loves him in her own way, of course. Gentleness just isn’t usually part of it.

He’s locked it all away deep inside of him by the beginning of school the next morning, all the _hurt_ if not all the _anger_ , with determination born from vowing to never be so foolish again. This is a lesson learned. Of _course_ no hunter could ever care about a werewolf. He’s more experienced now and wiser and he’s grateful to Chris for making him overcome such childish weaknesses. He hopes Chris got whatever he was after, going to all that effort to seduce him. It can’t have been a fun assignment.

Come the winter sports season, Peter joins the basketball team. He’s popular almost instantaneously.

Kate Argent burns down the house twelve years later with Peter and the Hale pack trapped inside of it.


	2. Chapter 2

“I expected you sooner,” Chris says when he enters his apartment one evening and finds Peter sitting in one of the armchairs. Posed just so, of course; Peter is prone to perfectionism.

He shrugs one shoulder. He’s going for cold and aloof because he’s trying to keep from saying anything foolish here. He’s waited a long time for this. Years and _years_. “I’m afraid I was terribly busy. You know, catatonia followed by murder followed by being murder _ed_. Resurrection takes a lot out of a person.”

That, plus he thinks it would’ve been terribly tacky to come here when Victoria Argent’s body had barely even cooled. A person should be allowed a mourning period.

“I imagine so,” Chris says. He sits down on the couch across from Peter. “I guess I should thank you for waiting until Allison is staying over at Lydia’s.”

Peter shakes his head. “Don’t thank me for anything, Christopher. I’m not here to be _kind_.”

Chris just sighs. Yes, he must’ve known this was coming. He must’ve been expecting it the moment Peter made it known that he recovered from his injuries, from the fire.

“Was it worth it?” Peter asks. The confused little frown Chris responds with is annoying and not cute at all. Chris looks different than he used to. He’s only grown handsomer, really, but there’s no tenderness in his face anymore. Not for Peter, anyway. “Was the whole charade of seducing me worth it for whatever intel you got? I imagine it was the tunnels. That’s how Kate lit the fire, isn’t it? And I’m the idiot who told an Argent about them.”

“No, Peter, it wasn’t like that.”

Peter doesn’t believe it for even a second. “Then how exactly was it? She obviously did to Derek what you did to me.”

“Yes, but I didn’t have anything to do with it,” Chris says. He runs a hand over his stubbled jaw and sighs some more. Chris is, apparently, a tired old man. There’s gray in Chris’s hair and beard scruff. Peter refuses to think it’s attractive. “I called it off that night. I got home and I told Gerard I wouldn’t do it anymore. We left town immediately. He was _furious_ , of course, and I’m sure that’s when he started sinking his hooks into Kate. She didn’t used to be like that. But she followed through on the plan I’d put a stop to before.”

“Such a good Samaritan, deciding _not_ to burn my family alive when you had the chance. Why didn’t you stop her then?” Peter demands.

Chris looks away towards the moonlit window and shakes his head. “I wasn’t around. Gerard had me working some case on the east coast. I knew as soon as I heard about the fire that he’d just wanted me out of the way. Because he thought I was weak…”

“No, you’re not weak. You performed admirably. You managed to get a werewolf at their most vulnerable and all you had to do was make them cookies and ask them to a dance and pretend they were interesting, even though they were totally aware of what you are and should’ve known better. That’s a real talent,” Peter says.

Chris finally glares at him. Yes, the anger is what Peter wants. He hasn’t decided if he’ll kill Chris tonight yet or not, but it’s a distinct possibility. “Stop it, Peter. It wasn’t like that at all.”

“I hope the sex was good at least. I mean, I know I didn’t participate all that much, but you’re the one who didn’t want to go further. I would’ve gladly let you. You were my _first_ , after all—”

“ _Stop_ it.”

Peter laughs, an empty, hollow sort of sound. “You can’t possibly expect me to believe any of it was _real_ , can you? It was all an act. Tell me otherwise, go ahead.”

“It was an act at first, yes, but then it really wasn’t. I was terrified of getting too close because then I’d have to… I didn’t want to kill the people you loved. They hadn’t even done anything wrong,” Chris says.

“Your code? Really? That’s your defense right now? But your code doesn’t have anything in it about seducing young wolves, does it?” Peter rolls his eyes dramatically. No, he thinks ‘the code’ is _bullshit_. Hunters only follow it when they want to. When the power to define the rules is in the hands of the people meant to be following those rules, they’re never in the wrong.

“Peter, I did that because my father _made_ me. Under other circumstances, things could’ve been different. I _wanted_ them to be different. I… I enjoyed our time together. None of that was fake,” Chris says and he sounds so earnest that Peter wants to hit him until he’s unconscious. It isn’t _fair_.

“Am I supposed to forgive you now?” Peter asks. “Am I supposed to just stop being angry now that you’ve said I really _was_ special to you after all?”

“Be angry all you want. I’m not asking for forgiveness,” Chris says, like a man resigned to eternal damnation for a multitude of sins. Probably what he did to Peter is only minor among them.

How dare Chris be _resigned_ when Peter wants _confrontation_?

“I waited for you,” Peter says. It really isn’t what he intended to say at all but, well, now it’s out here. Emotions are far too unpredictable for Peter’s taste.

Chris just seems confused. “What do you mean, you waited for me?”

“When you left. I went to school and I waited for you for two days. I thought maybe you were sick, that you’d feel better and return to school and ask me to be your boyfriend properly. I didn’t hear about you leaving town until the third day. You could’ve left me a note or something. Anything would’ve been better than allowing myself to feel such misplaced hope even for a short amount of time,” Peter says. “A note would’ve been fairer. But you knew you were leaving before I got out of the car, didn’t you? That’s why you said ‘goodnight’ instead of ‘see you Monday’. You knew.”

Chris nods.

“I think you knew before we even got into the backseat of the car, what with how you said we didn’t _have_ to. You could’ve said no or made any number of excuses. You didn’t, though. You let me get into the backseat with you knowing you were going to be disappearing the next day. What, you figured a fuck was the least you deserved for all your trouble?”

“I never said I was a _saint_ ,” Chris says, glancing away again like he’s ashamed. “I wanted you. I _liked_ you…”

“You wanted me,” Peter echoes. “Curious.”

That gets Chris looking at him again. “What is?”

“The tense of that doesn’t really ring true,” Peter says.

Now it’s Chris’s turn to roll his eyes. “Is that how this is gonna go down? With you trying to break my heart now as some kind of revenge?”

Peter hums thoughtfully. “I honestly hadn’t even considered that tactic. The idea that you might actually have some lingering _feelings_ for me is ludicrous.”

Chris stops looking so resigned and prey-like and begins to look more like a hunter on the prowl. Peter hates it because it means he must have given something away and Chris is about to go on the offensive. Peter _hates_ when other people are on the offensive. “Is it? Tell me you don’t have lingering feelings for _me_ , Peter.”

Peter’s not sure where this is going anymore. Somehow, he lost control over this conversation and he hates that, too. He considers saying _no_ , but obviously that would be a lie and Chris could somehow trap him in it… Well, honesty it is then. Honesty, he thinks, can be an even better weapon than deception sometimes. “Of course I do. No one ever _really_ gets over that first heartbreak, do they?”

He can see it hit Chris like a slap to the face. _Ha_.

Chris takes a moment to compose himself—to stop feeling like a monster who breaks the hearts of poor, trusting teenage werewolves—and then says, “Well, the way I see this, we have two options here.”

“Three,” Peter counters. “We have three options.”

“Oh? What’s the third option?” Chris asks.

“I could kill you now and be done with it.”

Chris actually has the gall to _smile_. It’s that same smile from before, from when Chris was a senior and Peter was a sophomore. The one that he still doesn’t want to admit is wonderful. “You could. But you won’t.”

Peter scoffs. “So confident of that, are you?”

Chris nods. “Absolutely. As I was saying, we have _two_ options. The first is that we just get over all of this so we can coexist in Beacon Hills without unnecessary bloodshed.”

Somehow, Peter doubts that’s likely. He thinks he’ll always be prickly around Chris, if not outright hostile. “And the second option?” he asks.

“We get over it so that we can try again, without the baggage and without the outside forces pressuring us for results,” Chris says.

Peter hadn’t been expecting that in the least. “You want to ‘try again’?”

“Maybe not right away, if you’re not ready, but eventually. It would be nice. I could bake you snickerdoodles,” Chris offers.

“Christopher, aren’t you forgetting that you’re only recently a widower? What would the townsfolk say?” Peter asks. Really, he’s just trying to push buttons to make Chris regret the suggestion. If Chris changes his mind now, there’s no chance of him changing it later when Peter might have foolishly let himself be vulnerable again.

“I don’t care what they say. She’d want me to be happy if I could, not miserable forever,” Chris says.

“Happy with a _werewolf_ , though?”

“Well,” Chris says, shrugging. “Nothing’s ever going to be _perfect_.”

“So romantic. But I’m afraid I’m determined to be angry forever. Sorry. Besides, I’d be far too tempted to fuck you and then sneak out before dawn to watch from a distance as you realize you’ve been taken advantage of.”

“That wouldn’t be even remotely surprising, so it loses most of its effect. Come here, Peter,” Chris says, holding a hand out towards him like he’s a skittish cat. Peter narrows his eyes at it. “Pete…”

Peter huffs crankily. “Don’t call me that. I’ve _always_ hated being called that.”

And now Chris _chuckles_ , like Peter isn’t a dangerous creature of the night at all. “I dunno. You never told me that before. You must’ve loved me too much.”

Peter goes to slap Chris’s hand away, but Chris grabs him by the wrist. He shouldn’t have doubted Chris’s reaction time. Chris hauls him out of the armchair and onto his lap. Peter, while momentarily surprised, isn’t amused. Not even a little bit. Chris holds Peter about the waist, as if Peter couldn’t claw his face off from so near. “Let’s go out to dinner.”

“It’s after midnight,” Peter points out. He’s crossing his arms and trying his best to look very displeased. Maybe it looks silly with him sitting in Chris’s lap, but whatever.

“Then let’s go out to dinner tomorrow. You can spend the morning telling me about awful science fiction things I don’t really understand and we’ll bake in the afternoon.”

“And tonight?” Peter asks.

“And tonight,” Chris says. “You’ll come to bed with me. I seem to recall there being talk of a ‘next time’…”

“No, you said we could do more ‘some other time’. That isn’t really an explicit declaration of intent. Believe me, I agonized over every single word you said that night,” Peter insists. He’s maybe sulking a little bit.

Chris moves his hands down to Peter’s hips, feeling them like he’s weighing the differences from when Peter was a teenager. “Believe _me_ , it was absolutely a declaration. Of desire, if not exactly intent. And I always keep my promises.”

Peter doesn’t hear any lies. It’s nice to know that Chris really _did_ want him then, that he wanted more than a quickie in the backseat of a car with the boy his father told him to seduce. Peter presses a hand to Chris’s chest and asks, “Do you mean to extract promises from me?”

“I don’t think you have quite the same relationship with honesty as I do. I’ll be glad enough if you just stay with me for as long as you want to. Though maybe not specifically in this apartment—you creep Allison out,” Chris says with far too much amusement.

Peter shrugs carelessly. “I imagine that’s a fairly normal consequence of being a vengeful murderer who has risen from the grave. Hopefully I’ll grow on her.”

Chris looks _happy_ , in a quiet and subtle sort of way, and that’s when Peter realizes he more or less agreed to what Chris is asking for. Maybe that’s a promises extracted from him anyway. Damn.

“Don’t act like you’ve won something here,” Peter says. He’s a little peeved. He should’ve impaled Chris with kitchen utensils or something as soon as Chris got home. “I’ve been angry with you for a lo—”

Chris kisses him. It’s different now. It’s not the age or the stubble or any of that, though. It’s just _different_. Something about the years and the shared history between them and the amount of experience they’ve had since the night of the homecoming dance. Peter feels less unwisely optimistic and more aware of what’s going on now. But it’s kind of the same, too, and Peter recalls the pair of them dancing, the way it felt to be pressed close together and the way Chris smelled. Chris still uses the same cologne. It’s still just as subtle and still just as nice paired with the natural scent of Chris’s body.

But it’s different, also, in the way that Peter isn’t ashamed of what he is. He wasn’t then, either. Not really. But he thought somehow _seeing_ Peter as a werewolf might send Chris running. He’s not worried about that anymore. He lets his eyes glow—blue now instead of the gold from his youth, but Peter thinks the blue suits him better anyway—and he lets his fangs grow long when Chris’s tongue is in his mouth, lets his claws curl in Chris’s shirt.

He doubts he’ll be able to get away with clawing at Chris often and is determined to take advantage of it when he can.

He catches Chris’s lip oh so gently between his fangs, pulls back enough to look at Chris with blue, _blue_ eyes and lets out a low snarl. Yes, _let_ Chris know he’s doing this with a monster. The sudden and heady scent of Chris’s _lust_ is a little unexpected. Maybe it shouldn’t have been, though. He remembers Chris watching his hickeys heal in the moonlight, remembers thinking Chris might have a werewolf fetish…

“ _Kinky_ ,” Peter says after he lets Chris’s lip slide out from between his sharp teeth. “Maybe we can break out your undoubtedly state of the art restraints next time. I bet you’d look lovely all trussed up.”

Chris grunts. Peter thinks it’s a delightful sound. “Go ahead and try to tie me up. We both know that would end with you in the restraints; you just like the illusion of being difficult.”

Difficult? Alright, Peter’s self aware enough to admit, if only to himself, that that’s at least a little bit true. Instead of answering, he rips Chris’s shirt open in front and leans in lick along Chris’s collarbone. He lets his fangs catch on skin and bone ever so softly and listens to the way Chris’s heartbeat speeds up. He bets there’s still a part of Chris that thinks Peter might rip his throat out. That doesn’t seem all that healthy, as far as relationships go, be Peter thinks it’s perfect.

He _does_ , at least, retract his fangs when he bites Chris at the place where his shoulder meets his neck. He wants a mark that _lasts_ , but maybe not _forever_ as scar tissue. Just until he gets to mark Chris all over again when the bruise fades. Chris’s groan is intoxicating. As he licks along the indentations from his teeth, Chris starts scrabbling at Peter’s clothes.

“I thought you were taking me to bed,” Peter says, sitting back and smirking a little bit at seeing Chris like this. Flushed with lust and _wanting_. It’s good.

“What, you want me to carry you?” Chris asks. He looks like he’s torn between rutting against Peter until he comes or just shoving him off onto the floor, which would be hilarious and satisfying on a totally nonsexual level. “You’re not exactly _light_ and I’m getting on in years, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“Oh yes, you’re _ancient_ , you poor delicate thing,” Peter chuckles as he stands up and hauls Chris over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. A bridal carry might’ve been more dignified, but Peter doesn’t care; this way, he gets to grope Chris’s ass. It’s good to be a werewolf with inhuman strength. He takes Chris to the master bedroom he found earlier while alone and snooping and drops Chris onto the bed.

Chris looks ruffled and cranky, but mostly still very aroused. “In the morning, I’m gonna trap you in bed in a circle of mountain ash.”

“Of course you are, darling,” Peter says. He starts removing his clothes before Chris gets any ideas about ruining them and Chris strips down, too. That shirt of Chris’s is still a goner, though, so Peter isn’t entirely sure why Chris bothered to throw it at the hamper.

He lets Chris haul him onto the bed for the sake of his wounded masculinity. Being _naked_ with Chris, as opposed to merely getting just naked _enough_ to make it work, is an _experience_. Peter doesn’t even put up a fuss over being maneuvered onto his back so long as he can feel at Chris’s skin with broad strokes of his hands. For getting on in years, Chris is still plenty fit. There are scars, from ‘hunting accidents’ no doubt, but Peter is fascinated by them.

He fights down the urge to rake his claws over Chris’s back, to leave scars of his own like carving initials in a tree. He doesn’t think Chris would enjoy the sentiment.

Chris is re-making the same hickey on Peter’s sternum again and again. It’s endearing, really, or it would be if Peter wasn’t feeling impatient. “Marvel over werewolf healing some other time.”

Chris bites at his nipple and, alright, he’s a little bit ashamed of the _yip_ he makes over that. He makes a face when Chris laughs at him. “Excuse me, Christopher. Maybe we should reschedule this,” he says, shifting to push Chris off of him and get out of bed.

But Chris holds onto him and shakes his head. He suddenly looks a great deal more _intense_ than he did a moment ago. “No. We’re not waiting anymore. You wanna do this, right?”

Peter maybe feels a little nostalgic. Over two teens negotiating consent, honestly. He doesn’t know when he got so _emotional_. “Right. And you want to, too?”

“Right,” Chris says, his lips brushing against Peter’s for a moment before they’re kissing again. Things get kind of blurry and desperate from there, Chris’s body moving against his and his moving against Chris’s. There’s a moment when he grabs Chris’s upper arms too hard and leaves little finger shaped bruises. He’ll kiss them better later.

He’s been with other men since Chris, obviously. He’s been with women, too, and all of it has been perfectly lovely. But there’s something about the way Chris’s cock slides against his own that’s lovelier by far.

It’s also very nice that they have more stamina this time around. But by the time Chris is getting the lubricant from the nightstand, even Peter’s panting a little bit. “Optimistic, were you?”

“Not really. Honestly, I thought you’d at least beat me up for a while, if not kill me,” Chris says with that terrible, wonderful smile that Peter hopes he’ll get to see more of for a long, long time. “I was a little _hopeful_ , maybe…”

Peter, helplessly, finds Chris’s death wish endearing.

And then it’s fingers inside of him, Chris going irritatingly slowly as he works Peter open one at a time until Peter is _trembling_ and too strung out to even feel ashamed, until Peter is mentally cursing Chris for not taking advantage of werewolf healing and just getting _on_ with it. “I swear to you, Christopher, I will decorate my home with your insides if you don’t _hurry up_.”

“You can go as slow or fast as you want when it’s your turn, alright?” Chris reasons. He presses a kiss to Peter’s quaking thigh and curls his fingers _again_ against Peter’s prostate.

It’s torture, is what it is.

“When it’s _my_ turn, I’ll have you face down against the mattress,” Peter says, only it’s half incoherent with moaning and stuttered breaths.

“I look forward to it…” Chris _finally_ licks his way up—deviating at Peter’s cock for a moment—until he’s looking down at Peter instead of up at him from between his legs. Chris is looking at Peter like he’s a precious thing and isn’t that odd? Peter can’t remember when he last felt _precious_ to anyone. Maybe it was with Chris all those years ago, on that last night of theirs.

But tonight is a do-over, a first instead of a last and certainly not some combination of both. He’s not going to sneak out before dawn to make Chris suffer what he suffered and they both know that. They’re already planning next times.

“Shut up and fuck me,” Peter says with a smile. Really, he thinks that about sums up their relationship. Chris laughs and settles between Peter’s legs, hauls Peter’s ass up onto his thighs, and finally presses his dick into Peter. It’s slow and desperate and wonderful, the rocking of Chris’s hips. It’s infinitely better than Peter could’ve possibly imagined as a teenager. He wraps his legs around Chris and moves with him and holds him and kisses him, breathes the same air as him.

This doesn’t make the wait _worth_ it, per se, but it maybe makes it more bearable now. At least the wait had an excellent reward.

Peter might not even really need Chris’s hand on him, but he has it, Chris sliding his hand between them and his callused fingers curling around Peter’s cock. He comes with his nose pressed against the juncture of Chris’s jaw and neck and Chris comes inside of him a few moments after.

With the sweat and semen cooling on their bodies, they curl up facing each other in the middle of the bed. Peter is blinking sluggishly from satisfaction and Chris is watching him.

“You’re not going to sneak off, are you?” Chris asks.

Peter lets out an amused hum because other, more complex noises like laughs or scoffs aren’t really in his wheelhouse at the moment. “Of course not… You actually want me to stay?”

Chris nods.

“And you’ll bake me snickerdoodles?” Peter asks. “Whenever I want?”

“Mhmm,” Chris says with another nod, his little smile all fond. It would be irritating if Peter were in the mood to be irritated, in that affectionately irritated sort of way that Chris somehow still inspires in him after all these years.

“Promise?” He doesn’t mean the snickerdoodles, of course. He means about Chris wanting him to stay. But he’s sure Chris knows that; Chris is too clever for his own good.

“I promise…”

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, come follow me on [tumblr](http://thevoiceofwrath.tumblr.com/)! ♥
> 
> Also, you know. Kudos and comments are nice. Just saying...


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